True Christians “are constantly rooting out wrong habits, driving themselves into right habits,” wrote Herbert W. Armstrong (The Incredible Human Potential).
Does this describe you? Can you identify a good habit you are working to form right now? A bad one you are trying to break?
Royal Vision editor in chief Gerald Flurry has encouraged us to use strategy in our war against sin. Actively making and breaking habits is a powerful strategy we can employ in that war.
Mr. Flurry has also directed us to learn strategy from the great spiritual warriors of the past. Mr. Armstrong was one such warrior, and he had much to say about habits.
“Godly spiritual character is the habitual action and conduct of the person or created entity to come to a knowledge of the true ways of God, and to exercise the will to follow those ways even against opposition, temptation or self-desire to the contrary,” he wrote in Mystery of the Ages (emphasis added throughout). Building and breaking habits is a vital part of building holy righteous character.
Mr. Armstrong actively worked on his habits right up to the end of his life. In a 1981 sermon he said, “There were already many habits that had developed that I didn’t overcome right away. Some of them I overcame right away. Others took a little longer. Perhaps some of them haven’t been totally overcome yet! I hope that before I die, that I shall have overcome every habit.”
Follow Mr. Armstrong’s example of working on your habits right to the end.
Thinking Habitually
Cambridge English Dictionary defines habit as “something that you do often and regularly, sometimes without knowing that you are doing it.” So much of the Christian way of life revolves around tasks we undertake regularly or how we unthinkingly respond to certain situations.
God commanded Israel’s priests to develop certain physical habits, pointing to good habits we must cultivate. He had them offer sacrifices every evening and morning (Exodus 29:38-39). He had them maintain a fire burning on the altar around the clock (Leviticus 6:8-9, 12-13). The work of a priest revolved around daily habits.
So too does much of the Christian way of life. We renew the inner man “day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). There is a fire that we too must not allow to go out in our lives and must take regular action to keep alive (1 Thessalonians 5:19).
We cannot put a lot of work into our spiritual life all at once and then take a fortnight off. We must do things like prayer and Bible study daily, keep God’s Sabbath weekly, and fast roughly once a month.
There is great power in habits that make it easier for us to live God’s way of life. As the dictionary says, you can do a habitual activity “sometimes without knowing that you are doing it.” That more commonly refers to bad habits. A good prayer habit certainly does not mean you get 15 minutes into your prayers before you realize you are praying. Still, building good prayer habits does make it much easier for you to get your prayer in. You don’t have to decide each day when to do it. A solid routine helps ensure that you will make enough time for prayer and that it will be effective.
Mr. Armstrong made this point in a 1984 sermon. A magazine article he once read asked, “What is easier to remember, to wind a one-day watch (like a wristwatch …) or to wind an eight-day clock (one you have to wind every eight days)?” He answered, “[I]f someone says the eight-day clock, that shows how ignorant they are! The one-day clock becomes habit.” An eight-day clock requires winding on a different weekday. It can never slot in with a routine and become habitual.
God was using the same principle with ancient Israel. “God instituted these rituals to develop the habit of obedience into the Israelites back in the days of Moses,” he said. “There were things to do morning, noon and night” (ibid).
God gives His saints the Holy Spirit today. We don’t need the same set of rituals to teach us the habit of obedience. The Holy Spirit imparts God’s love, with an attitude of submission that physical Israel could never have. But the principle of habitual action, and its power, remain.
The Habitual Way
So much of our Christian way of life can be thought of in terms of habits. The Apostle Paul often talked about God’s “way” for good reason (Acts 18:26; 26:14, 22). “Christianity is indeed a way of life,” the Herbert W. Armstrong College Bible Correspondence Course says. “It has everything to do with the way we live our daily lives—our day-in, day-out association with others, our business practices—even the way we handle our money” (Lesson 12).
We can think about financial habits. Do we habitually tithe on our income as soon as we receive it? Do we have a habit of sending in our tithe of the tithe or budgeting for offerings? Do we have a saving habit—or perhaps a debt habit?
What about our family habits? Do we have a habit of eating together each evening? Or a habit of vegging out in front of the tv? What are our Sabbath habits like?
We may also think about how we habitually respond to situations that arise. When we are in trouble, do we habitually offer up a prayer? Are we habitually friendly to others? How do we habitually respond to correction—welcome it, or reject it?
Mr. Armstrong wrote in his autobiography about ambitious individuals, not yet called but with “the habit of exerting … energy.” That habit is a powerful advantage! When that energy is “turned at last in the right direction, something is really accomplished.” Do we have that habit? Are we cultivating it in our children?
Do we habitually focus on the task in front of us? Or are we habitually distracted? How do we habitually respond when something goes wrong?
“Do you keep calm in emergencies, or lose your head and go to pieces?” Mr. Armstrong wrote in The Seven Laws of Success. “Do you think rapidly, yet clearly and logically, or do you freeze up and go dead? To succeed, you need to cultivate the ability, and the habit, of remaining unexcited, yet leaping to action on high tension, reaching the right decision, then acting on it!” That is a habit that takes effort to build.
Satanic Habits
We need to work to build good habits. We must also be aware that Satan has actively worked to build bad habits in us—things we do routinely without really deciding to, or ways we automatically respond to events.
The true Christian, Mr. Armstrong wrote in The Incredible Human Potential, “has turned from his former life of habitual sin ….” But this doesn’t happen all at once. “He is the creature of habit, and all old former habits do not just automatically leave him without any effort on his part to overcome them,” he continued. “… It is inevitable that he may be caught off guard and make a mistake.”
This is an important component of our spiritual war. “Can any man, all at once, break all habits he now sees are wrong?” wrote Mr. Armstrong. “No, he finds he has a fight against acquired former habits.
“He still has this pull of this invisible but powerful Satan to overcome. This pull has been subtilely instilled as a law working within him—produced by the broadcasting of Satan the devil—the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2). This whole world is in tune with the very mind of the devil (Revelation 12:9)” (ibid).
Our battle against human nature is in part a battle against bad habits. Mr. Armstrong wrote that human nature “has been acquired from Satan. It was not inherited from our parents. It was not created in us by God. That which has become habitual and therefore natural becomes a nature within us” (ibid).
Satan actively pulls us toward bad habits. Consider the Apostle Paul’s dilemma recorded in Romans 7, committing sins he didn’t want to. “This is what habits do,” said Mr. Armstrong in a 1979 Bible study. Sin “has gotten in us as a matter of habit—but that is where the Christian life has to be a matter of overcoming, and you don’t do it all at once. You have to struggle with it until you finally do get it right.”
Of course, even without Satan’s broadcasts, forming good habits still takes work. In the World Tomorrow, when the devil is bound, people will not automatically acquire good prayer habits without effort and teaching. Yet Satan’s broadcasting adds an extra pull against good habits and a push toward bad ones.
However, God uses this to His ultimate advantage today. He allows Satan to test our habits as a means of creating in us a higher level of character. Maybe we have worked to build a solid prayer habit, for example. God will allow Satan to disrupt our routine and see how much we fight to maintain it. In doing so, He builds even greater determination and resilience in us.
You Need Help
There is a vital spiritual truth about the connection between habits and godly character that we must remember.
Mr. Armstrong wrote: “Godly spiritual character is the habitual action and conduct of the person or created entity to come to a knowledge of the true ways of God, and to exercise the will …” (Mystery of the Ages). So habits are tightly bound with spiritual character. But they are different.
Habits can be formed with human will alone (though they need not be). However, righteous character, which includes right habits, is a gift from God.
“The human will cannot build spiritual character,” writes Mr. Flurry in How to Be an Overcomer. “… The human will is human, and it cannot build godly character. It is of the man. Godly character is of God.”
Mr. Flurry quotes a 1983 sermon in which Mr. Armstrong said, “Now you and I have a part in our creation as we ultimately are to become, brethren. We have a great part in it! But don’t forget that we are a work of God’s hands. His creation is going on in us, but we have our part in it; and yet the character that is to come into us comes from God.”
Human effort and willpower cannot build the habits of holy righteous character. Yet we do need to exercise that willpower for God to put His character in us. “It’s God’s character, which must come into us,” Mr. Armstrong said. “But it must come with our consent, with our desire, with our will and willingness; and we have to will ourselves and have the willpower to go that way and go that way constantly.” It is all about allowing God to build His character in us!
When an unconverted Herbert W. Armstrong developed the habit of approaching problems with drive and energy, when he cultivated the habit of being an early riser, he was not building holy righteous character. But he was building character traits God could later use.
Even in developing these kinds of habits, we battle Satan’s pull. He is far stronger than us, and we need help.
God’s way “is the way of a constant battle—a striving against sin—a seeking God in earnest prayer for help and spiritual power to overcome,” wrote Mr. Armstrong. “And if they are diligent, they are constantly gaining ground. They are constantly growing in God’s knowledge, from the Bible. They are constantly rooting out wrong habits, driving themselves into right habits. They are constantly growing closer to God through Bible study and prayer. They are constantly growing in character, toward perfection, even though not yet perfect” (The Incredible Human Potential).
We need to take and use God’s Holy Spirit to build right habits and break wrong ones, and in the process build God’s holy righteous character. Habitual attitudes of outgoing concern, of loving fellow man as ourselves and God’s Family with all our heart and mind—these come from God, through His Spirit. We must drive ourselves to go to God, and submit ourselves to Him, to obtain them.
We need to see this spiritual dimension in building good habits and breaking bad ones.
Harness the Power of Habit
Thinking in terms of habits can be a powerful way of turning good intentions into tangible results. When you receive encouragement for doing the right thing, look for ways to reinforce that by building a positive habit. When you receive correction, seek to create habitual change.
If you want to pray longer, for example, plan precisely how to fit that into your routine. It may require that you wake up earlier. That may mean examining and changing other habits: You may also have to go to bed earlier, which would mean changing your evening schedule.
Or maybe you are working to improve the quality of your prayers. Are you drowsy? Maybe you are going to bed too late. Or maybe you need to switch up your morning routine to ensure you are properly awake before praying.
What about Bible study? Are you often distracted? Cultivate a habit of shutting down the computer or closing your e-mail before you begin your study. If you are striving to improve your physical health, you could examine when you habitually eat junk food, and cultivate a new habit of taking an apple to work, or finding a time to fit workouts into your routine.
Do you want to improve your Sabbath observance? Focus attention on your weekly Sabbath routine. Do you want to be more hospitable? Consider how you could build a habit, or a schedule, of inviting people over.
If you are a parent, work especially hard on cultivating good habits in your children. Child Rearing With Vision discusses habits at some length. We can contribute greatly to our children’s future success by helping them build good habits early in life.
Any time you feel corrected or motivated by a message, ask yourself, What habits can I change to put this into practice?
Then, plan things out. Plan the good habit, then adjust the plan as needed while you put it into practice.
Plan out how to avoid bad habits as well. Paul instructs us to actively “put off concerning the former conversation the old man” (Ephesians 4:22). Look at your negative patterns of behavior and change them. Don’t “give place to the devil” (verse 27). Don’t offer Satan opportunities. Look at the circumstances in which your bad habits tend to be triggered, and avoid them. If you waste a lot of time alone with your computer, move your computer to a common room. If certain friends draw you into bad habits, avoid them. If you struggle to get in the prayer and study you need, work to build the opposite habit, of getting that in at the earliest opportunity.
Have Maximum Concentration
“When you have to tackle a problem, concentrate everything you have on that problem,” writes Mr. Flurry. “Bring everything possible to bear on solving it” (op cit). He gave the example of Napoleon, who focused his attention on breaking through the enemy lines at just one point.
Forming good habits and breaking bad ones is hard. We cannot form every good habit and break every bad one all at once. Attain victory by focusing on just one or two habits, and really apply yourself. You will often have to fight hard for two or three weeks to make or break a habit. Once that one is established, then move on to another.
It takes much more effort to create a good habit than to maintain one. Mr. Armstrong spent the equivalent of hundreds of dollars learning to wake up early (sidebar, page 22). He only needed to make that major investment for a short time to build that habit.
Like Mr. Armstrong, take extreme or creative action. A husband, wife or roommate can be of great help. You could work on the same habit together or as a family.
Structure your life so that more and more of your habitual thoughts and actions are in line with God’s will; this will enable Him to accomplish more with you. He will be able to create more of His perfect character in you—habitual action and conduct to know and act on the ways of God, even against temptation to the contrary—character just like God’s!
Sidebar: The $100 Habit
Even before he was converted, Herbert W. Armstrong put a high value on habits. As a young man, he decided he needed to build the habit of waking up early. He tried using an alarm clock, but found he would sleepily switch it off. Once, when at a hotel, he promised the bellboy a generous tip if he would make sure he was awake and dressed at 6:30 the next morning. In 1974, when sharing this story, he wrote that the tip he offered “then had about the same effect that a $20 bill would have today.”
With inflation, that same tip would be worth $130 today. Mr. Armstrong offered the rough equivalent of a $100 bill as a tip. And he paid it multiple times! He put a high value on building this habit!
This was carnal, pre-conversion Mr. Armstrong. He had no vision of building holy righteous character. From just a physical perspective, he believed it was worth spending hundreds of dollars to build this habit.
This was a physical habit God was able to use mightily in Mr. Armstrong’s life. Consider, could Mr. Armstrong have later built his life around his prayer rock if he hadn’t established the habit of waking early in the morning?